Gustav Edolf Fjaestad (Swedish, 1868-1948). Vinterlandskap med frusen sjö (Winter landscape with frozen lake), 1945. Oil...

Description

Gustav Edolf Fjaestad (Swedish, 1868-1948)
Vinterlandskap med frusen sjö (Winter landscape with frozen lake), 1945
Oil on Masonite
30 x 42-1/2 inches (76.2 x 108.0 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: G Fjaestad 45

PROVENANCE:
Bukowskis, Stockholm, June 4, 2019, lot 470;
Private collection, Ridgway, Colorado, acquired from the above.

Gustaf Adolf Fjæstad was one of the leading Swedish painters at the turn of the 20th century, celebrated for his masterful winter scenes which recorded the snowbound forests and picturesque frozen lakes of Värmland in western Sweden, an area known for its fierce winter storms. He was also a successful graphic artist, noted tapestry designer, and cabinetmaker.

After training at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm (1891-92) and the Konstnärsförbundets skola (1893), he worked as the assistant to Bruno Liljefors on his decorative projects at the Stockholm Biological Museum, and collaborated with Carl Larsson on the murals now at the Stockholm National Museum. In 1897 Fjæstad moved to Värmland, where he spent most of his life, and founded the Racken Group of artists, named after the Racken lake near Arvika. There he also joined theosophical groups.

Interestingly, art was a "second career" of sorts for Fjæstad. An exceptional athlete who had been a champion ice skater, Fjæstad held the 1891 world record for skating the fastest English mile. In the present work as well as in others that feature frozen lakes painted in obsessive detail, vestiges of his love of ice skating can be seen; etched onto the ice are the swirling tracks which skaters have left behind.


More information about Gustav Edolf Fjaestad. See also: Fjaestad, Gustav Edolf Artist.



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